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April 2012

When this newsletter comes out, perhaps temperatures will
be a bit more seasonable, but as I sit here writing, it is night, and it is 63
degrees. Our windows are wide open without a hint of breeze. It is hard to even
place myself in the proper season. The time change comes so early now, and this
hot daylight seems to stretch itself out before us like a distorted haze.

Is it truly quiet when
I am out in the woods; is it silent in the morning? Or is it only that it is
way too early for a rousing dawn chorus? Migration is just beginning. I heard
an Eastern Phoebe call in the distance the other day when I was out. The American
Kestrels are back at Kip’s Barn in Sapsucker Woods, and Great Blue Herons and
Belted Kingfishers are on local streams. I have a sense of millions of wings
rushing towards us, and I feel a dread that they will not find what they need
when they get here. High pollen alerts have appeared on the weather page for
the past two weeks. Red Maple flowers cover the branches with a vibrant blush.
I have to pinch myself to remember that it is mid-March. And even then it does
not truly register in my mammal brain. The leaves are springing out of their
bud covers on all trees, and it is this new tender growth that caterpillars
munch and thrive on. Will the warblers, thrushes, orioles, and catbirds find
what they need? The skies are hard blue; white puffy clouds drift slowly
between me and powerful rays of the sun. There is no shade, and dust blows off
the plowed farm fields.

Next door my neighbor has just had his big old apple tree
cut down, having become sick of cleaning up the apples from his yard in the
fall. He cut down a large, ancient Cottonwood so the fluff does not collect in
his gutters, and he pulled out the hedgerow between our yards that had become
unmanageable. All of these perches and shelters taken away from the birds that
fly to my feeders. In my yard, where I am trying to grow winterberry and
elderberry, yellow birch and gray dogwood, I am finding myself in an unwelcome
battle with White-tailed Deer who need to browse. In my attempt to create a
working habitat for wildlife, I have fenced in as much as I can with plastic
mesh and metal poles. We do not really know how to tread lightly on this earth.
The human foot is heavy and unrelenting.

It is true too that so many of us have forgotten even how
to notice. I watched last year as people walked under an oak tree with a
Baltimore Oriole in his bright orange and black beauty, his throat vibrating
the melody that we all can latch on to in one note. And no one even looked up.
You don’t need to know what it is, but you do need to look. And then you need
to care. But I don’t need to tell any of you. You all know it deep inside.

What are we confronting? What are all the beautiful
creatures of the earth confronting? None of us really knows yet what will come.
People keep asking, “What are the birds doing with all of these changes in the
weather?” We don’t quite know yet. When we do know, will it be too late?

So no, I don’t think it’s a beautiful day. A beautiful day
is when it is the kind of day it is supposed to be, with blankets of snow
slowly melting into the ground; a hint of warmth in the air; a few snowbells
bravely displaying their white, sepaled throats; and the trill of a Song
Sparrow ringing out in deep cold, as a harbinger of what still remains to come.